Monthly Archive: October 2015

I recently put out the query “how do you convince your husband or wife to be frugal?” It’s a question Mr. Frugalwoods and I receive with regularity and it’s one that we’re woefully inept at answering having never done it ourselves. Since we came to the decision to pursue extreme frugality together, we haven’t had the first-hand experience of navigating the challenging waters of aligning divergent financial goals. And so, I shamelessly begged asked all of you fabulous...

Greetings fellow frugal weirdos! Welcome to Part 7 of our Frugal Homestead Series, which explores the finer points of how we’re going to reach our version of financial independence and move to a homestead in the woods in 2017 at age 33. Mr. Frugalwoods and I plan to buy 20+ acres of wooded land, likely with an existing home and outbuildings, in rural Vermont. While this series isn’t your standard personal finance blog fodder, it’s a uniquely personal endeavor for...

No one wants to be in an airport. It’s a place of transition and flux and it’s not a final destination. Being in an airport means you’re in process towards something. You haven’t arrived anywhere yet. Mr. Frugalwoods and I spent almost 8 hours at Chicago O’Hare airport last Thursday waiting for my parents’ flight to land. The quick logistical background is that the cheapest flight from Boston to Chicago arrived at 9am and my parents’ flight...

So just what does a frugal weirdo do on a daily basis? People ask us all the time–no really, how do you and Mr. Frugalwoods make it through each month on only $1,000 or less? Are we holed up in a hovel weaving dog fur into sweaters to keep warm? Sitting in the dark to save electricity eating cold beans straight from the can? Not a chance! Hate to disappoint, but our daily lives bear a striking resemblance to everyone...

“Frugality is so awesome! Now, how do I convince my spouse/partner to get on board with it?” Mr. Frugalwoods and I are asked this question almost daily and I was all set to write some windbaggy mellifluous literary masterpiece in response. The only hitch is that I have to confess my honest answer is “I have no idea.” Mr. FW and I struggle with plenty of other hurdles in our marriage, but we’re fortunate that we’ve always been on roughly...

Having a baby? Getting married? 10th anniversary? Adopting your first iguana? We’re led to believe that each of these milestone events is a requirement to spend money. In fact, there’s an entire cultural phenomenon built around the idea that in order to properly fete an occasion, we should buy stuff–and often, a whole lot of stuff. The media, advertisers, and society at large all trumpet the false assumption that money = celebration. While these life landmarks are usually mandatory, the spending...

As I lay on the operating table with a laser moving towards my eyeball, I knew I’d made the right decision. Ok, maybe I didn’t know it in that precise moment of mingled excitement and low grade terror, but I certainly knew it about an hour later when I could see without glasses or contacts for the first time in 16 years. A little over two years ago, I decided to take the ocular plunge and get...

There exists out there in the world a misconception that extreme frugality dooms you to a life of intense labor that could otherwise be provided for you through an expenditure of money. But in our experience, that’s simply not true. Mr. Frugalwoods and I don’t live like indentured servants (except perhaps to wait on Frugal Hound)–quite the contrary! It’s all about striking a harmonious balance between the allocation of time and the outlay of money. I used to think that...

September was markedly more expensive than the past several months due to a panoply of miscellaneous occurrences. Most notably, we booked flights to Chicago for my cousin’s wedding, which takes place in a few short weeks. Time with family is something we value tremendously and so spending money on these plane tickets was an easy decision to make. It’s also the beauty of living the uber frugal life–when we want to travel, we just do because we...

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